Today, in Chicago, anti-Communist hero Lech Walesa is headlining a Tea Party Rally. The Rally is in support of Republican Candidate for Governor Adam Andrzejewski. 20+ years ago an American President helped Lech take back his country. Today Lech returns the favor and helps us take back ours.

The president has increased opportunities in at least three different fields.

(more…)

It all started in Chicago. Rick Santelli’s call to arms was broadcast from Chicago. The first Tea Party was last year on a cold day in February.  I heard you.  We need a new generation of leaders that will serve the people, not the political class.  My campaign for Governor started because I heard you and I still hear you.

The Tea Party movement is now a year old and what better place to celebrate the movement than in Chicago. We will be at the Dierksen Federal Building plaza at 2:30pm having a rally in honor of the movement and to celebrate all that we’ve accomplished.

I’m also bringing in someone who knows a little something about freedom and just a few decades ago he was fighting in Eastern Europe and Ronald Reagan stood at his side. Lech Walesa will be addressing the gathering to tell us about his struggles.

(more…)

From the New York Daily News:

The White House ordered the Justice Department to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The White House took the action hours after Mayor Bloomberg called Attorney General Eric Holder to say he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere.”

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg told reporters.

“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City.”

State leaders have railed against a plan to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Manhattan federal court since Holder proposed it last month.

(more…)

The Senate has voted on three pieces of legislation today that required 60 votes–to raise the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion, to reduce the deficit by establishing five-year discretionary spending caps, and Ben Bernanke’s confirmation–all of which interim Senator Paul Kirk (D-MA) has voted on. In addition, there have been other Senate votes since Scott Brown was elected as Massachusetts senator that Kirk cast a vote.

The main question here is: why is former Senator Kirk still voting on these legislative pieces? According to Senate rules and precedent, Kirk’s term expired last Tuesday upon the election of Scott Brown. Furthermore, Massachusetts law can be interpreted, according to GOP lawyers, as:

Based on Massachusetts law, Senate precedent, and the U.S. Constitution, Republican attorneys said Kirk will no longer be a senator after election day, period. Brown meets the age, citizenship, and residency requirements in the Constitution to qualify for the Senate. “Qualification” does not require state “certification,” the lawyers said.

Additionally, as reported in the Weekly Standard and investigated and confirmed by GOP lawyers:

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Four conservative activists accused of trying to tamper with a senator’s phones were just trying to record embarrassing undercover video of her staff ignoring phone calls from constituents angry that she supported health care reform, one of their attorneys said Thurday.

The four, including activist James O’Keefe, known for posing as a pimp and using a hidden camera to target the community-organizing group ACORN, were arrested Monday after targeting Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in a New Orleans federal building.

Attorney J. Garrison Jordan denied they were trying to disable or wiretap the phones in Landrieu’s office.

“You’re dealing with kids,” he said. “I don’t think they thought it through that far.”

Instead, Jordan said, they hoped to get embarrassing video footage of Landrieu’s staff handling constituent calls. Her office received complaints last month that callers opposed to her health care stance couldn’t get through.

Landrieu was not impressed with Jordan’s explanation.

“Attorneys are hired to spin for their clients,” she said Thursday in an interview in Washington. “Good luck.” (more…)

A new national poll finds a crisis of confidence on economic issues among Americans — and younger Americans (those 18-29) — alike.

Among the key findings, Americans and Millennials:

Are not confident in the government’s ability to handle the economic crisis. (59% of Americans;  55% of Millennials)

• Want a free market approach and oppose greater government regulation of business.  (55% of Americans; 53% of Millennials)
• Believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.  (67% of Americans; 60% of Millennials)
• Want the same set of moral standards in business life as in personal life.  (75% of Americans; 66% of Millennials)
• See business decisions based on greed as morally wrong. (74% of Americans; 77% of Millennials)
• Think their careers will be negatively impacted for the long-term by the current economic situation (55% of Americans under 65 years old; 55% of Millennials).

“A year into the Obama administration, we find that Americans — and younger Americans — are having a crisis of confidence,” says Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus, the group that commissioned the poll. “People are increasingly pessimistic about the government’s ability to handle the economic crisis and a majority believes that increased government regulation will hurt the economy.”

(more…)

Wednesday nights, I usually watch “Ghost Hunters” on the SyFy Channel. Yes, I am one of those geeks. But this week, I set the DVR so that I could watch President Obama give the annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and the American people.

I might as well have watched a bunch of people using high-tech gadgetry to try to make contact with the other side, because I certainly didn’t learn anything new in this world.

Anyone who has paid even scant attention to Obama over the past year or two has heard it all before. We heard about the need to act “boldly” and “aggressively” in a crisis, the need to pass climate change legislation, the need to pass the health care boondoggle, the requisite bashing of banks and Wall Street, and, lest we forget, blaming Bush for everything except ABC’s cancellation of the show “Ugly Betty.”

In the private sector, constant passing of the buck gets you fired. In government, it earns you points with your base.

(more…)

Today is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time.  At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe.  My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study.

So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”

Thus it came as no surprise to me that Keith Olbermann’s super sub, David Shuster, called me early Wednesday.  ”Watergate Jr.” pushed MSNBC to send Shuster down to New Orleans to own the destruction-by-media of James O’Keefe and anyone in his proximity.  I immediately told Shuster that I had been getting emails about his absurd, over-the-top and rush-to-judgment journalism.  He told me that I had him confused with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, that he has “no horse in this race.”  He asked that I come on his show and that he would give me a fair interview.  He proceeded to send me the following emails to formalize the request.  See below <strong>(emphasis mine)</strong>:

As you see, Shuster is attempting to lure me into this story based upon the false premise of his objective neutrality on the issue. Notice he says, “As I said, I don’t have a horse in this race.” A simple Google search of David Shuster and James O’Keefe immediately finds that Shuster went into a Twitter frenzy to tar and feather James O’Keefe and propogated what are now provably false lies about the Landrieu case.

See below:

(Read the full post and watch the video of the interview at BigJournalism.com)

United Auto Workers (UAW) union rank and file members shout down their own UAW leadership in a heated meeting on January 24th, as their UAW leader loses it at the podium.  Sunday’s meeting in California made last summer’s Town Halls look like a family picnic, after a few choice words from their UAW leader spurred the crowd of rank and file members to erupt in screaming and chaos.  At one point,  another attendee tries to reason with the crowd, pleading “we have women and children in here that are scared.”

WARNING: Strong language, angry-town-hall-mob-like-behavior

(more…)

Prior to last night, we could have all agreed that President Obama had one undeniable and great skill; the man could deliver a speech. His national political career, after all, had been launched with a speech, at the Democrat Party Convention in 2004. More than that though, his entire political history–and trajectory–can be mapped by speeches. When his primary campaign for the Presidency was sputtering, a rousing speech at the Iowa Democrat’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner created the momentum he needed to win that state’s pivotal caucus. When inflammatory video of his long-time pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, surfaced and threatened to derail his campaign, a well-received speech on race allowed him to turn away the controversy.  A Will.I.Am video riff of one of Obama’s speeches was such a potent piece of political propaganda that even I developed a bit of a man-crush on the One.

Obama seemed to have a gift for perfectly capturing the tone and mood of the public. It may seem a tired cliche now, but his speeches did much to inspire the hope people attached to his candidacy. Even rather vague or pedestrian phrases seemed to soar in his gifted hands. I had accepted it as a given that, if his political fortunes were ever down, Obama would be able to reverse his troubles by pulling just the right speech from his rhetorical bag of tricks.

No more.

Obama’s State of the Union address last night was not just overly long and dull, it was totally tone-deaf politically. Coming on the heels of a political upset in Massachusetts, with deteriorating poll numbers and anxious members of his own party, Obama badly needed a home-run to change the political dynamics. He struck out.

(more…)

Following up on our post yesterday, the Workforce Fairness Institute has this video asking SEIU boss Andy Stern which Senators does he think are terrorists.

(more…)

Let me first say, if what is being reported in the media is accurate, a dumb prank was attempted in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu by James O’Keefe and his comrades.

There should be zero tolerance for crime, regardless of who does it.  If O’Keefe is guilty of what the FBI is alleging, he should be held accountable.  The Left believes that now, but where were they six months ago?

It’s interesting to observe, and personally experience, the hypocritical way the Left is treating this situation. Consider two unsolicited e-mails I received Monday night from a few liberal wackos with too much time on their hands.  Here’s the first, which was accompanied by the subject line, “Republicans are As—-es!”:

Hey as—-e, why don’t you talk about the son of a bitch who broke into Senator Landrieu’s office in LA? Yeah, scumbags like you don’t care about the law.

The other, titled, “James O’Keefe is going to jail! YOU FAILED!”:

(more…)

Haiti is located on the western side of the island of Hispaniola approximately 700 miles southeast of Miami between Puerto Rico and Cuba.  The Treaty of Ryswick signed by France and Spain in 1697 resulted in the formation of two separate but incongruous states, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  The official language of Haiti is French and Creole while in the Dominican Republic it is Spanish.  The mostly black population is a result of slave trading when it was a French colony.

In 1897 through 1912 instability in Haiti drew attention to its strategic importance.  A small number of Germans maintained a large amount of economic power.  German military intervention during a Haitian revolt in 1902 and word that Berlin considered using Haiti as a fueling station for its naval fleet became a concern for the United States. Under the policies of the “Monroe Doctrine” President Woodrow Wilson began planning for the occupation of Haiti.

The occupation of Haiti finally ensued and the United States ruled Haiti through a military government from 1915 through 1934. Under military rule Haiti prospered through development of a road system, schools, improved disease prevention, medical care and communications.

Unfortunately the Haitians grew to resent the occupation of the United States and violent protests resulted in the deaths of many Haitians at the hands of the US military.  In 1934 the US left Haiti and the country became a dictatorship.

(more…)

The State of the Union Address that Barack Obama delivered last night bore little, if any, resemblance to the speech that, in my opinion, he should have delivered. The actual speech was, in fact, all too typical of the genre. It ran for an hour or more, and it consisted of an interminable laundry list of putative accomplishments and proposals. When, near the end, the President said, “I don’t quit,” I found myself thinking, “No, surely! But I very much wish you would.” In the course of an hour, I felt as if I had spent three weeks listening to the man. I very much doubt that I was alone.

Seven things stood out.

First, at no point did Barack Obama acknowledge that the promises that he made in campaigning for the so-called stimulus bill have gone unredeemed and that unemployment has continued to grow in a fashion that, he told us, it would not.

(more…)

Today, in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just seconds after lift-off. All seven crew members were killed.

For those in the mainstream media committed to report the false and libelous narrative of “Watergate Jr.,” “wiretapping” and “bugging,” I predict much egg on your J-school grad faces. In your rush to judgment to convict James O’Keefe and his companions, you vengeful political partisans of press forgot to ponder: “Was Mr. O’Keefe up to one of his patented and obvious clown nose-on hidden camera tricks, trying to make his subjects look foolish?” Blog commenters seem to be quicker on the uptake than six-figured Washington-based pundits these days. And I predict there will be tape to vindicate these four pranksters, too.

We’ve closed down the live blog, but feel free to move the conversation to the the comments.

“With all due deference to separation of powers…”

Since a dialogue is a conversation between two or more people, Washington Democrats’ refusal to acknowledge the voice of the American people betrays their one-party, monologue approach to governance. Tonight, the National Republican Congressional Committee is working to stop the monologue and create a meaningful dialogue between House Republicans and the American people.

Between now and the beginning of the State of the Union address at 9 PM EST, you can either text “UNION” to 777218 or visit our Web site (www.nrcc.org) to sign up to participate in our first-ever mobile text chat room. The NRCC is providing a forum for all concerned Americans to discuss issues that are important to them, framed in the context of the President’s speech. Additionally, national figures such as Dana Perino, Grover Norquist of ATR, Former Senator Fred and Jeri Thompson, Former Congressman Tom Davis and Erick Erickson from Red State will be part of the discussion, providing their personal thoughts on the speech.

Following the speech, we invite you to join us on our Web site for a live streaming video Question and Answer session with me and several of my House colleagues, including Republican Leader John Boehner and NRCC Vice Chairman Greg Walden. This is a unique opportunity to directly engage with House Republican Leadership and Members of Congress and to receive our immediate observations on the President’s speech.

(more…)